Smurfocalypse chapter 66: A Day of Work
The sun was well up, breakfast was over, and it was time to get down and dirty to plant some spring crops. Mango found himself volunteering again to take field work over deconstructing human furniture which could be a dangerous job. Mango removed Duck's lead and him wander hoping he knows better than to get into any trouble by now, and then grabbed his hoe from inside Duck's shelter and made his way to the fields on the other side of town from the beach. As he walked he saw Equilibrist ride passed him on his unicycle. They seemed to be going the same way perhaps Equilibrist volunteered to continue farm work as well. Mango would also encounter Explorer Smurf in his brown hat and coat, and Weather Smurf also showed up. It was time for some real intense hard work. Today was going to be a day of tilling land, planting seeds, and then watering those seeds. Frequent trips to and from the well to gather water for the crops.
Mango didn't feel so left out due to already knowing Equilibrist, and he knew Weather Smurf as well.
"So Farmer wants us to start doing our thing right here. We were already working on it a bit with him earlier right Mango?" Equilibrist said.
"That's the day Duck came back from the south." Mango said.
"Alright, I'll start planting the lettuce over here in the corner since this plots all done." Explorer said.
"I'll get the water!" Equilibrist said hopping onto to his unicycle with the bucket.
"Looks like he left enough watering cans for all of us." Mango said going through the little barn Farmer had next to his hut.
"Come on Mango. Let's you and me till some more dirt." Weather said.
"Alright, I'm on it." Mango said.
The two Smurfs grabbed their tools and went to the untilled soil and began whacking at it with their hoes.
"It should rain in another couple of days. If we Smurf these seeds in the ground before then nature will water them for free." Weather said.
"Sometimes it rains for days in the jungle." Mango said.
"What do you do when it rains for days?" Weather asked.
"Me living on my own had to work anyway. When it rains that's one of the best times to fish." Mango said.
"What exactly does a fish taste like?" Weather asked.
"Different… From anything you're used to eating. One of them can give you enough energy to last you the whole day." Mango said.
"Really? The whole day huh? Just one?" Weather asked.
"Oh sure. Most fish from the ocean are big enough to swallow a Smurf though so you have to club it in the head when you reel it in." Mango said.
"How do you have the strength to reel in such big fish? Sometimes I worry about Fisher when he goes out there all alone to fish off the docks." Weather said.
"It's all about the rod. Let the rod do the work for you. Tire it out, and reel it in." Mango said.
Explorer planted seeds while Equilibrist rode back and forth from the well getting water on his unicycle. Farmer's spring crops were in good hands, and at the first house work was a little more intense. Taking apart human furniture without damaging the wood they intend to use meant there was a lot of pulling nails out of the wood. The nails were a little bigger than they were used to using. Several Smurfs along with Handy and Carpenter were working on taking apart the coffee table in the center of the living room.
Disassembling furniture was probably a skill they could have used Coconut for, but for the first time she hasn't been around to work. She was busy taking apart the porch at Dreamy's place to recreate it so it'd be wheelsmurfer friendly when he got out of the clinic. It was inevitable that at some point she would have found her own project, and the village was good enough off that not every single Smurf needed to shell out hours of intense labor like they had to do when the huts and businesses were being built.
"This coffee table alone has all the wood I will need to make a couple of these devices and then some, but we'll continue to work on this house until we've got all the useable resources from it. That's what Hefty told me he wanted done on the list of responsibilities." Handy said as he removed a nail from the table.
Handy's iron prosthetic is still functional due the fact he wasn't out fighting with it and using it as a weapon. He was using it the way it was intended which was as an artificial limb. Presumably Handy will be able to manage his arm for the rest of his life unless something forced him into combat then there was no telling what could go wrong. The gears and inner workings of Handy's mechanism were complex, and if the gears get lodged out of place it can cause organ damage, broken bones, and/or an irritable pain when the gears grind against the skin. The gears would then need to be surgically removed, and reassembled along with any other dislodged parts.
"I'm thinking we shave down these nails, and use them ourselves." Carpenter said holding one of the long iron nails.
"I could file them down I bet. They are a little big for anything we might build…" Handy said.
"I wonder what sort of training Hefty and the others plan to do. They're already super strong." Carpenter said.
"Hefty didn't say what sort of training they'd be doing, but I saw Brainy giving out potions so they must be planning to beat the Smurf out of each other." Handy said.
"There's really no other way at this point as far as I see it. I don't know much I didn't even pass basic training, but those knights are so tough they'd almost have to fight one another to improve." Carpenter said.
"We all need to pray Hefty finds the results he is looking for on the plateau." Handy said.
These projects would be going on for two weeks. Hefty laid down the law, and gave the Smurf's at home a rather… hefty chore list, and Handy had to temporarily take over as leader meaning he had to take on Hefty's responsibilities while he was gone. Every Smurf was busy, there was plenty of work all around, and therefore there were little excuses for an idle Smurf. This work would continue daily, and two days later Hefty and the knights would make it to the plateau. Hefty's training would then begin.